The legendary KSFO call letters were shifted to the 810 AM frequency on January 1, 2025 when owner Cumulus Media buried the century-old KGO brand. At the same time, the 560 AM frequency in San Francisco became KZAC.
This exhibit deals with the 90-year history of KSFO, originally known as KTAB.
KSFO came into being in 1935, when Wesley I. Dumm, a banker who’d moved to the Bay Area from Wyoming for health reasons, made a series of major moves.
Dumm had helped rescue the financially-challenged KTAB, put on the air in 1925 by Oakland’s Tenth Avenue Baptist Church (the “TAB” in the station’s call letters). Dumm had taken control of the station under an arrangement that transferred the license to his newly-formed The Associated Broadcasters. The deal promised the church a daily half-hour of airtime plus a five-hour block on Sundays.
Dumm’s hiring of Phil Lasky from Salt Lake City’s KDYL and a move from Oakland to the penthouse of San Francisco’s hot new office address, the Russ Building, signaled big changes for the station now known as KSFO.
ADDITIONAL EXHIBITS:
The History of KTAB and KSFO Radio
“The World’s Greatest Radio Station” Defined “The Sound of the City”: 2012 CHRS Journal article
